PLAGUE DIARY 35: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

No Blade of Grass (1970)
It was all I could find. It was either this, or An Inconvenient Truth. Because it’s Earth Day. This is perhaps the worst film ever made. There are many films, I’m sure, that could vie for that title. Where do I start? — bad lip-synching (how did that happen?— it’s filmed in English), too many naked breasts for my particular taste, an afterword —“This is not a documentary, but it could be!”, it stars the director's wife (Jean Wallace — there’s a reason you haven’t heard of her), ingenue John Hamill’s claim to fame was that he was a male physique model but he never takes off his clothes in this movie, Roger Whittaker wrote the title song, every ten minutes or so the movie cuts to images of abandoned cars / polluted streams / dead animal carcasses (don’t worry, the epilogue assures you that no living creatures were killed in this film — that of course doesn’t include the hopes and dreams of Cornel Wilde — the director — and his well meaning cast). Do you get the picture? All are fleeing an environmental emergency set in the distant future. But halfway through the film — just in case you make it that far — a fleeing pregnant woman has a baby. The birth of the baby is shown quite, quite graphically — I must say I’ve never seen a baby being born before, at any rate I have never seen a bloody vagina before, with a bloody baby being pulled out. It was very educational. I’m not quite sure why this was in the movie? Perhaps because the birth of a child is the most enthralling and inspiring moment in the life of any human being? I really can’t comment on such things. Then there are the movie’s tag lines: A VIRUS OF DOOM ENVELOPES EARTH!!!! THE CREEPING TERROR DRIFTED TOWARDS THEM STAMPING OUT ALL CIVILIZATION IN ITS EERIE PATH!!!!! MADDENED BY FEAR, THEY TURNED AGAINST EACH OTHER!!!! As you can see, No Blade of Grass is a documentary about COVID-19. Further proof: the virulent virus that is infecting the grass, and killing all the animals (but please remember, none were hurt for this movie) causes food rationing, travel restrictions, and martial law. Proof also,  in this quotation "You know what I think caused the virus it’s because them Chinese fertilize everything with shit.” And: “If the country shows the spirit of the battle of Britain we will pull through!!” However, there is one line in the film that might disqualify it for status as a COVID-19 documentary: "None of this would have happened if we had gone to Canada, we would have been safe and my daughter wouldn’t have been raped!” Are you sure? Actually I’m not sure about you — the person reading this (if there is one). I’m not sure if you are following me. What’s the point of making fun of bad old movies — when people are dying? Well for that matter, what’s the point of living — when people are dying? But we somehow always managed to do it in times gone by. No, something  changed, in the zeitgest, in people’s world view, in our collective unconscious. It’s as if people are finally taking the phrase ‘my brother’s keeper’ much too seriously. The mayor of Las Vegas wants to open casinos. Anderson Cooper asks, incredulously: ‘And people will be smoking there, and drinking there, and gambling, and having fun?’ Nothing could have disgusted Anderson more. How dare we have fun while people are dying? In case you hadn’t noticed, having fun while people die is one of the most difficult tasks that life has given us, and if we can’t rise to that particular occasion then we are dead too. I see -- I’m so callous. So cold and unfeeling. Well the reason it’s important to review stupid old movies is because we are now living in a stupid old movie. It’s an apocalyptic movie called: No Blade of Grass, or Mad Max, or Snowpiercer or The Road, or Zombieland, Doomsday, Children of Men, On the Beach, Escape from New York, Dawn of the Dead, The Day After Tomorrow, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, SHALL I GO ON? All of a sudden — for some reason — we have discovered that human life is expendable and it’s so, so shocking. Why didn’t we think of that before? What bubble have we all been living in? A bubble created by that little screen in front of you. And it’s a drug far more powerful than anything Aldous Huxley predicted in Brave New World. Fact has become fiction, and fiction has become fact. Aristotle and Plato knew it — they were terrified of the rhetors (a fancy word for artist). There are very few artists left, but art left us with darkly efficient technologies of deception — which are no longer used in the cause of art (techniques like: surrealism, genre mixing, anti-heroes, unreliable narrators, creative non-fiction —to name a few…). The only actual conspirator here is capitalism — which is one animal that I would have liked to see killed in No Blade of Grass. Capitalism eats money. It eats your life. It’s not right or wrong, it’s a thing, like a rock, meaning it’s not alive, but it produces mass entertainment, which is very much alive and is now eating us whole. On second thought imagine capitalism as a giant snake, and we are the body of rabbit — cute and furry and unsuspecting, slowly being digested under its skin. CNN is so boring right now, and Anderson Cooper presently pisses me off. But oddly, some people just adore it. Real life, true to the heart real stories, about people dying. About people who loved their mothers and fathers. People who cared. People who had winning smiles, and cheered up a room when they walked into it — but are now tragically inexplicably gone. Why, why oh dear God why? People who cared for other people, and never asked for any thanks for what they did, and weren’t movie stars — but they suffered like martyrs for us, and if not — then they suffered in spite of us. And so, we want to go to a party and smoke a friggin' joint? What kind of beasts are we? We are the kind of beasts that an animal called capitalism has brainwashed into believing it’s better to sit home, order food, watch Netflix, and watch porn -- than it is to walk out the door, eat an apple, see a play and have sex. Cuz it’s so much easier to stay home. So much safer? And let me tell you — you’ll live a lot longer? And it’s so nice and cozy inside. For God’s sake will you stop complaining about not being able to go out? Go out where? Why? You have everything you need here! You have a family who loves you, or are you so tone deaf to real human feeling that you don't even understand that? Wake up, smell the coffee. It’s brewing downstairs. Put on your robe and your bunny slippers. Snakes don’t eat bunnies. Nah… that’s just a horrible thing a horrible man said, in a horrible blog. No, no, there are bad things outside, but you are inside —where it’s safe, and you can dream you are anything you want to be — that is, within reason. As long as you stay in the boundaries set up The Disney Corporation (i.e., your dream must have to do with super-heros, and be animated, and heartwarming). There's only one caveat. Just don’t try and live your own dream. Why bother? We’ve set up a ready made dream for you here -- it's the same as everyone's -- and the most magical thing about it is you don’t have to go out of the house. Ever. Because dreaming is all you need.